A number of questions SHOULD be asked when attempting to produce a good SEO portfolio for your site. I have listed some of them here to help:
Q:Do I need a third party consultant/company?
A: This really is dependant on either your existing knowledge about SEO, your funds and how quickly you would like results. If you do decide that SEO really isn’t an area of expertise for you then it really is best to find a professional to complete the work. Make sure they really know what they are doing though or you will be wasting your money. Some of the other questions here should help you.
Q: What is pagerank and do I need to worry about it?
A: PageRank is an algorithm (mathematical equation) used by Google to represent the importance of a page and its content. Google uses this algorythm as a factor when deciding how to place your site within its index. A number of factors can affect your search engine ranking and pagerank is a significant one (but not the be all and end all).
Q: What is duplicate content?
A: Duplicate content is basically a copy. An article or page which exists elsewhere on your site (or another site on the internet). Any SEO professional should know this term intimately.
Q: I have found a site which will add my link to 2000 websites for a buck, is this a good idea?
A: Any link which points to your site can affect your search engine positioning. These can be both positive and negative influences. Focussing your time, effort and money on a smaller number of really high quality links will yield greater results than hundreds or more links from sites which are themselves trying to increase a ranking and could have quite questionable content. Where possible you should be aiming high in terms of quality at the expense of quantity if required.
Q: How important are my keywords and descriptions?
A: People may argue this forever and a day. The general concensus is that keywords in meta tags are fairly redundant. The description tag is almost equally redundant in terms of helping your ranking but is pretty important as the text which is displayed in search engines as an introdution to your content.
Ultimately these questions can only be a small help. Trust your gut instinct and set clear requirements for what you are expecting (and where possible, make a portion of the payment dependant on these results). This works to both ensure that you and your consultant are signing from the same sheet and also that neither you nor your consultant agree to anything that cannot be delivered.
If you are looking for SEO consultants and would like some questions to ask them which are unique to your situation, drop us a line and we would be happy to help you produce some.
October 29th, 2007 at 2:19 pm
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